China King Buffet — Restaurant in Morganton

7:45pm on a Monday. Most of the buffet is running out, dried out or wiped out by people coming in for take out, as soon as it's refilled. I waited on items to be refilled throughout our dine-in visit. The only time they refill a buffet item is after someone tells them. Who wants to wait on items to be cooked when eating buffet. The whole idea is variety, availability and plenty of it. The only items available had been sitting under the heat lamps for a very long time and continued to sit untouched because of that very issue, dried out and hard as charcoal. Sesame and bourbon chicken was like chewing on a rubber ducky, actually all of the different chicken dishes were like that. The egg drop soup had began to gel and harden and hardened along the insides of the pot. The sweet&sour red sauce was grainy in the pot. Wontons in the wonton soup had darkened and become somewhat gelatinous and rubbery. Every shrimp item was stuck together like a fresh pot of homemade rice crispy treats. The green beans had dried out and wrinkled up looking like a Shar-Pei. The fried cream cheese wontons got hit with a Nuke....... and to beat it all they were completely out of the lowest cost item in any restaurant, Sweet tea and this was at 7:45 pm. I had this same experience with this restaurant over a year ago. After this experience and a long reading of multiple reviews of late and far in to the past, they have NOT changed and it appears they aren't planning on a change. My wife and I spoke with the older, long haired woman, who was their at the register to take our money, about all of this. She said "you should've told us, we would've made for you" I explained to her, that's what all of your take out customers are already doing and then they clean it all out as soon as it hits the same old dirty pot. The customer should not have to tell a restaurant owner when to service the customer or how to run a successful restaurant business. I pray they correct their issues, improve their quality and improve their service. By the way, she gave back $5.00 for our troubles. This was our experience and opinion, everyone else will have to form...

Let me just say this. Me and a friend went to eat here yesterday afternoon and I already had mixed feelings about it because of what I had read online. I’ll start with what I noticed first, the sanitation grade is 88.00 as of 3/31/2023. But we still decided to eat as there were quite a few other people inside eating… When we were seated before we EVEN SAT DOWN we were rushed into ordering our drinks. So of course I chose water and my friend chose tea. When I got up to go get a plate I noticed a kinda trash smell literally. I turned tiny left and there was a cart next to one of the buffet tables and it was full of old food and plates from former customers. I thought to myself ok… Maybe they’re busy and just haven’t had the time to take the trash out…So me being me I proceeded to go get food anyway because I’m not a picky eater I head straight for the sushi bar. I asked one of the cooks which one had crab meat and cream cheese and they both just stared me down and never answered me . So finally a member of the kitchen staff came out and kinda told me what was what because some have garnishments on top or sriracha etc and sushi is made differently depending where you go. I thought it was extremely rude and we’ve already been treated poorly since the start of this experience. Now as for the food. I have never seen or experienced that poor of a customer service experience in quite awhile prompting me to write this. The food bars were disgusting. The food was disgusting and the trash next to it didn’t help anything complimented with the terrible customer service. 10/10 do NOT recommend. Seriously this place needs to undergo a surprise inspection I bet they would...

This was by far the worst experience I have ever had at China King. We were excited to go because it’s the best buffet around. We get there and everything is fine, greets us like normal. The waiter forgot our drinks, but it was fine, until will get the drinks. The glasses were dirty we drop it, and we get our food when my boyfriend is spitting out his chicken, when I ask what’s wrong he tells me it’s pink and shows me, he don’t like confrontation neither do I but pink chicken??? That’s messing with someone’s health when I mention it to the waiter she said I’d need to talk to the manager. So we’re getting ready to leave and when I speak with the manager THE MOST RUDEST PERSON EVER. I am serve safe certified I know what chicken looks like raw, and as a former manager I’m am VERY disappointed. Goes to the table and grabs the plate and starts digging through it asking us where the pink chicken was I showed her and she proceeds to touch ever other piece of chicken and looking through it (with her bare hands might I add) and says that’s normal “it cooked 3 times” “it’s not raw, there’s no pink” continues to ask other customers around me with an attitude if the chicken is pink or not. Worst experience at any restaurant I’ve ever been too. Shouldn’t have paid 30$ for food if our food wasn’t going to be...